--And speaking of stories, I've noticed more and more authors posting their works online for all to enjoy. Spotted recently: a vintage piece of cholesterol noir, "Lipidleggin," by science fiction/horror writer F. Paul Wilson and Bruce Sterling's "Kiosk," which he describes as "a kind of science fiction that could only be written in the 21st century" (see the Boing Boing blurb).

--Should the current economic downturn have you worried about global Apocalypse and Armageddon or if you're merely a casual survivalist/preparedness junkie, you may want to scan the list of 100 Items To Disappear First and begin your stockpiling accordingly.

--And finally, be sure to check out Scott Meyer's webcomic, Basic Instructions, on a regular basis.

Science fiction/science fact fans will have noted that Wednesday was Isaac Asimov's birthday, but, sadly, for devotees of Historical Novels Which Do Not Suck, this was also the day George MacDonald Fraser, creator of the wonderfully slapstick and outrageously funny Flashman*** series, died (nice tribute here). I've been a fan ever since reading Playboy's serialization of Flashman At the Charge way back in (gasp!) 1973 (and, no, I didn't buy Playboy for the articles, but I read 'em anyway), so I'm pretty much sad and nostalgic in equal parts.

By the way, I finished Sara Gruen's Water For Elephants the other day and in one of those...interesting (interesting to me, at least) coincidences, finished it on January 4th. "So, what?" I hear you thinking. "What's interesting about that?" Well, as you might have guessed from the title a crucial plot element revolves around a circus elephant named Rosie who, the author notes, is a composite of a number of real-life circus elephants including the notorious Topsy, responsible for the deaths of three men within three years (though, as far as I'm concerned, for good reason). Topsy was deemed dangerous and in 1903 was killed by electrocution at the (self-serving****) suggestion of Thomas Edison, who also filmed the event. The date? January 4th.

* There are those who claim my book hoarding is merely an attempt to create a gravitational locus strong enough to shift the earth's orbit in such a way as to end global warming. I only wish my motives were that honorable.

** Horror novels are strict adherents to Sturgeon's Law--90% of 'em are pure, unadulterated crap--and having wasted far too much money on what aren't even polished turds (*cough* Dean Koontz *cough*) I'm leery of anything not first recommended to me by people whose opinions I respect. In this case, however, the reviews have been so strongly positive I was more than willing to risk someone else's money.

*** You've got to love a character who freely admits his only talents are horsemanship, languages, fornication, and cricket!

Friday, January 4, 2008

Faithful readers will wonder (as did I) what, exactly, garnered me an "R" rating. Believe it or not, it's because I used the words "knife," "death," and "dead." C'mon people, if you're gonna lump me in with soft-core 'Eighties near-porn at least wait until I post details of my sex life!

Which, given the current state of affairs, could be a loooooong time in coming (puns intended).

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Wow. I got so caught up in all sorts of self-involved shenanigans I forgot to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve was a quiet affair for me... by choice. At 7:00 p. m. I met up with ratpackdude (aka Cliff), Dodger Dave and his date*, and a woman I didn't know (whose name, I'm ashamed to admit, I've forgotten--Kim, maybe?) at Mandarin Palace for a veritable orgy of Chinese food goodness, then Cliff and I, feeling it best to avoid the inherent drama of the Super-Secret Support Group Dance**, headed over to Alex's to welcome in the New Year.

I made a new friend at Alex's--Mocha the Hyperactive Weimaraner, who at first wasn't too sure about this big guy reeking of cat and cigarette smoke until he realized I was an indefatigable source of butt scratching, belly-scritching, and ear massaging, then it was all "love me, love me, LOVE ME MORE AND NEVER, EVER STOP!"

TV, Times Square, Dick Clark, dropped ball...

And outside, right on cue, the Richmond Volunteer Militia opened fire***, because, let's face it, what else says "Happy New Year" better than several hundred rounds of high-powered ammunition?

We ended the evening by watching The Proposition and thus continuing my five year tradition of viewing wildly inappropriate movies during the early hours of January 1st.

One more thing. I sent a text message to my friend Sarah jokingly asking what outrages she was committing for New Year's Eve. Her reply?

"Killing babies and turning tricks, you know, the usual."

Welcome to 2008!

Oh, and Sid-the-Cat (annoyed that I'm using the lolcat-i-cizer) wants to remind everyone...

* Who was young and attractive and vivacious as hell, but won my heart when she started rambling on about plate tectonics and physical chemistry. There's something about a woman with an in-depth knowledge of quantum mechanics that makes my pulse quicken!

** Every single time I've attended this abomination someone always manages to get his or her ass out of joint over something ridiculously trivial like who didn't hug whom or who was paying more attention to whom or who was being "inappropriate" or whatever. You'd think we were in middle school.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Earlier I mentioned my fascination with all things Fortean, strange, and weird, though I hasten to add I swallow none of this stuff without a side order of skepticism--Sturgeon's Law still applies and one must, therefore, be careful with what one believes. Still, it's fun to think there might be sea serpents, undiscovered animals, ghostly doings, gifts of prophecy, Mothmen, UFOs, mysterious fires and lights, lost treasures, and so forth.

Blame it on my babysitter.

Poor thing, for a couple of years she got saddled with a yakky child just about every other Saturday night because, well, I loved an audience--there were no kids my age in my neighborhood and, let's be honest, I was too damned weird for most of the kids at school. Even my parents had limited tolerance for my Aspergerian perseverations, and so, basically, I had no one with which to share the current week's obsession...except for unsuspecting relatives and hapless babysitters.

But Lisa A. was one smart cookie and quickly figured out that giving me something interesting to read would shut me up for the entire evening, thus allowing her to do homework, read teen magazines, chat with her boyfriend by phone, or whatever it was teenage babysitters did for amusement in the 'Sixties. On one particular occasion she tossed me a copy of the Scholastic Book Services (and there's a piece of nostalgia for the Baby Boomers--remember getting those flimsy little paperback catalogs in school once a month?) hottest offering, Strangely Enough! by C. B. Colby--an anthology of weird-but-supposedly-true tales.

She should have just given me crack--crack is less addictive.

The Money Pit at Oak Island, ghostly apparitions, haunted sentry boxes, ghost ships, flying saucers, mysterious TV signals, the strange behavior of felines (is your snoozing puddy actually King of the Cats?)--oh, it was great stuff! Over the next few years I wound up amassing a HUGE collection of similarly-themed paperbacks, discarded issues of Fate magazine, and UFO books, which was easy enough to do since this stuff was all the rage way back then.*

Spooky, ain't it? Oh, wait; there's more. Chabon went on to say that C. B. Colby was actually a Holocaust survivor named Joseph Adler who wrote of his experiences in a memoir, The Book of Hell.

Except Adler wasn't a Holocaust survivor at all; he was a former Nazi named Viktor Fischer.

Let that bit of weirdness sink in for a minute.

Now, let's get to the real weirdness-- there was a C. B. Colby, he did write a slew of informative books for grade-school kids including Strangely Enough, but he was not an ex-Nazi nor was he a Holocaust survivor--Michael Chabon made it up.

Certain literary types went absolutely ape-shit, as certain literary types are apt to do (witness the furor over James Frey's otherwise inconsequential piece o' fluff A Million Little Pieces), griping (with, maybe, some, but only some, justification) that Chabon had no right to appropriate the "Jewish Experience" for his own, personal aggrandizement, nor should he have presented fiction as fact without a suitable warning label.

Oh, pish-posh. They're just pissed because they got taken in by a storyteller. Chabon tells stories. We all tell stories and we all embellish them to greater or lesser degrees so as to entertain out audience. That's what storytellers do! Debate the ethics all you want, but I've never turned to the fictionistas when I'm looking for hard-core facts; I automatically assume a significantly high Embellishment Factor. Then again, my personality is such that I enjoy sifting signal from noise.

The brilliance of Michael Chabon is not only did he present a perfectly plausible weird story in his lectures (and let's be honest here, careful listeners received ample warning that what was to follow was not strictly true), he generated an entire meta-story as well.

Bottom line? Truth is stranger than fiction.

Strangely enough.

* The few friends I did have shared my interests and Saturdays often found us haunting dingy thrift stores in dodgy parts of town (especially the Cracker Barrel and the Nine-To-Nine Newstand in Basic City), scrounging for whatever coffee-stained, water-warped, mildew-scented treasures by Brad Steiger, Hans Holzer, and Frank Edwards we could get out grubby hands upon--rarely could we afford new copies, priced as they were at 75 cents, 95 cents, and, occasionally, an astounding $1.25.